CHANNEL SURFING.

"Danger Central: Spy Web: The Mossad": The History Channel...

"Danger Central: Spy Web: The Mossad": The History Channel dips a toe into the turbulent waters of the Middle East with this cursory and largely laudatory look at Israeli intelligence (10 p.m.).

The Mossad certainly took bold steps, including the raid at Entebbe and, says the show, assassinations of Black September terrorists associated with the Munich Olympics killings.

But its legacy and the thinking about it are surely more complicated than a breathless sentence like this one -- "Its willingness to use extreme methods like kidnapping and assassination to pursue enemies is legendary" -- would indicate.

Although its latter-day woes (the Jonathan Pollard spy case) as well as earlier successes are covered, it's all done with a narrative breeziness that fails to give weight to serious intelligence failures, such as the killing of 34 U.S. sailors in a naval vessel during the Six-Day War.

If you come away from this with a full understanding of the Mossad, then you are probably reading a good book about it as the show runs.

Also complicated is the programming strategy of the History Channel, which demands colon after colon in trying to give the correct title of its shows. "Danger Central," see, is the overarching series, running Mondays through Thursdays at 10 p.m.

Then it breaks down to subcategories: "Escape!" on Mondays, "Tales of the Gun" Tuesdays, "The Wrath of God" Wednesdays, and "Spy Web" Thursdays, of which "The Mossad" is an episode. There will be a test on this material.